This week’s video: Stitches and Tangles (Follow You)
Written: 27th July, 2005
Style: Blues/rock
Instrumentation: Voice, Dave’s Squire Strat
Influence: Feeling Good – Muse
The Song
Stitches and Tangles is one of the bumper crop of songs that I wrote in 2005. I tried recording it not long after finishing it, but my voice sounded terrible trying to achive those blues glissandos and note bends. I just didn’t have the resonance, or the vocal maturity (I still have a very young voice for my age) to pull it off.
Six years later, while sifting through old songbooks for any forgotten gold, I happen upon the song and give it a little go. Turns out my voice has ‘dropped’ (what’s the girl version of having your voice break?) significantly enough to pull off blues with a bit more conviction.
I wrote the song just before packing up and heading off to university. I liked the idea of being able to spread my wings and live outside of my family ‘bubble’. I began with the melody while out in my garden, so I started singing, ‘I walk to the edges of my garden‘. The song formed from there.
I probably didn’t realise it at the time, but I was going for the sort of feel Muse gives the song Feeling Good: heavier, more agressive, with a touch of whimsy. I listened to (devoured) tracks from Origin of Symmetry and Absolution repeatedly during my time at sixth form college and as a result I was itching to add more edge to my sound.
Of course, the only rock song I managed to pull off recording-wise that year was This Chance, but more on that another day.
The Video
This was an all-together unexpected upload.
I was scheduled to upload that day, but the video I had planned, Introducing CarylCake (borrowing somewhat from the style of thepappytube in this is me.) was nowhere near ready and I wasn’t entirely comfortable with it in the first place.
I knew I needed to upload something. I had my channel heading displaying ‘Next upload: Tues, 28th June’ and I didn’t want to go back on that so early in the game. I bit the bullet.
At about 4:30pm I set up my camera, picked a song I knew I could pull off, briefly sound-checked, then did it. Took me a while to gain enough confidence to play properly as the only rehearsal I’d had was sitting down on my bed in my pajamas strumming my acoustic and humming vaguely here and there, reading from my book. I hadn’t memorised the lyrics. Luckily I’d printed them out and written in chords as part of another project, so I was able to clamp them to my mic stand (makeshift camera tripod) and read when I needed to. That’s why I keep looking down. How embarrassing!
When I finally embarked on the ‘good take’ and managed to make my way all the way to the instrumental, I looked up in time to see the red recording light switch off.
It wasn’t low battery, I knew that much.
I finished the song anyway just in case it was still recording (always the professional…) and then checked my camera only to find I’d run out of space. Oh, bother. I’d spent six minutes faffing around on camera with what was essentially practice, not deleted it, and then cut off the end of my song.
I freed up some space, attempted to get the camera back in position, then sang the last chorus. I’m sure it looks like I did it deliberately to add emphasis but it really was just a splice job.
Except it’s digital so splicing is completley the wrong word.
Derp.